Utah Territory, 1882
The moon came up.
It slid from a satiny, wind-blown grave.
It came up over the mountains like some huge, luminous eye staring down from the misty sky above. Its pallid light sought and touched serrated horns of exposed rock, winked off drifts of snow, and imbued spruce and pine with a ghostly ambience. The wind blew and the trees bent, shadows dripping from them in writhing loops, finding craggy ground and slithering across the landscape like greasy black worms, filling hollows and glens and dark, secret places with night.
And high above, that bloated moon kept watch.
Not daring to blink.
If this was an omen, then it was a bad one.